In the wake of revelations about the president authorizing covert wiretapping of US citizens’ international calls, I’m reminded of the beginning of the end of the Nixon administration. (Read a time line of those events.) I was 14 in 1974 and watched every minute of the Congressional hearings on Watergate, and I watched the breaking news announcement on television as Nixon resigned . I immediately ran next door to where my parents were playing cards with the neighbors to give them the good news.

I remember my dad’s reaction. He was convinced the USSR would launch an immediate attack because the US was losing a “stronger leader.” As we all know, that never happened. I don’t believe that questioning a “strong leader” now would endanger the country any more than it did then.

Nixon justified a lot of things as the actions of a wartime president; secretly spying on enemies such as the Democrats and Daniel Ellsburg, surveillance of peace activists, and the illegal bombing of Cambodia as vital to National Security. I think he honestly thought history would vindicate his belief that what was best for his administration was best for the country.

Reading transcripts of Bush’s press conference yesterday calls to mind Nixon’s famous “I am not a crook” speech. Any actions he takes are justified in the name of keeping American safe. Bush would do it all again, he declared.

The scary thing is, I believe him. That’s why the press has to stay on this story and not be intimidated into silence by charges of encouraging “the enemy.” Without the Washington Post, Nixon would have continued his reign to the detriment of the country. Without relentless investigation and coverage by the main stream media now, Bush will be able to do the same thing.

The Senate turning back the renewal of the Patriot Act is only the first step. We need a truly independent Special Prosecutor with both the legal authority and the guts to follow in the footsteps of Archibald Cox and force the covert out into the open.

Let’s just see how many sacrifices of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties citizens are willing to accept in the name of an undeclared war, and whether they think this administration’s actions rise to the impeachable level of oral sex between consenting adults.